Through Time and Space
by PI-Valkyrie-exLorien
Summary: Irina Spalko is captain of an infiltration unit in the Russian Army, in the final years of WWII. This is the tale of her mental and physical struggles in the midst of machine warfare, and the slow path she treads to insanity through her driven hunger for knowledge and desperate search for order in a world of illogic.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello! This will be a multi-chapter fic regarding the back story and life of Irina Spalko. For two reasons this story exists: to give Spalko the depth of character she deserved in the film although they didn't bother to give it to her, and to prove that an antagonist can have depth without being 'one of the good guys.' I loved Spalko's character, even though she strongly resembled Willy Wonka from the Tim Burton reboot (the resemblance is uncanny). But I thought she could have been made a more complex character and been developed further. So I've decided to to that. **

**Disclaimer: Obviously I don't own Indiana Jones. That franchise has been around since before I was born, and I don't have the cash to buy rights. And yeah, this probably doesn't protect me legally, but this is fanfiction and nobody cares about it enough to do something. I hope.**

"I must be mad," Irina Spalko whispered to herself, striding with confidence through the sea of boys. They looked the part of men, but she had learned through her two years of training that if she judged by character and not appearance, the Russian Army was made up of boys.

There were wolf whistles. There always were. Throw a woman -any woman between the ages of ten and thirty- into a room filled with war hardened, emotionally constipated adolescents, and there would be wolf whistles. Although the last person to make a move on her had paid dearly for it, this was whole new order of soldiers. She expected she would have to train this lot to stay away just as she had the last, only this time she would see them die and have to shove away the guilt over her attitude towards them.

Needless to say, it had been quite tempting to lie about her a marital status on all of her formal registration papers for the mission. It might have kept the crowd of wild animals quiet.

"The new captain has arrived," one of them crowed with a grin, to see how she reacted. She neither flinched, nor looked his way as she approached her quarters at the end of the hall. As long as she was wearing a commander's uniform, she might as well take advantage of it and snap her soldiers into line as soon as possible.

She rounded the corner, only to nearly run into another soldier on his way out. "You must be the new captain," he said, tipping his hat before brushing past her and out the door. She nearly smiled at the show of respect.

With her knowledge and unique skill set, she had gained leadership of an infiltration unit bound for Europe. Indeed, she must have been mad to accept such a title, but there would be a lieutenant to serve as her second-in-command and back her up when the soldiers got rowdy and decided that they did not want to listen to a woman.

Indeed, it was strange for a woman to be in the military, especially a woman of her age -she was older than most of the recruits- who were only schoolboys enlisting with big dreams, anyway- but not nearly old enough to be considered a politician in uniform. Nonetheless, she had a great deal more practical knowledge, and a number of political assets on her side.

For one, her father was in a good position with Stalin. He was the one who had put the idea of enlisting in her head in the first place, when she realized that university would not agree with her. After all, she was a visual learner -which was what had gotten her so far ahead of the other recruits so quickly. She had learned at a young age that she was hyper-observant, noticing every detail and deducing them all with a sharp mind.

Thus, she had become somewhat of an outcast to the other children when her skills were made known, for some thought her a witch and others thought her telepathic. She had never been a socially apt person, and she had greatly enjoyed their reactions. And so, the rumors went about until she was in complete isolation. Not even her teachers had known what to expect of her, for she had joyfully deduced their lives aloud on the first day of classes. No, university had not been an option.

Then Stalin had gotten word of her talents through her father's talk, and some strings had been pulled to get her into the military, where she had worked and trained to equal and then better the men in her units, until they feared she could injure them both mentally and physically.

It was too bad, she thought, that she would have to train a whole new batch of soldiers to feel that fear -it really was the only way she could keep their hands and voices off of her, unless she incapacitated them all. Which she was not by any means beyond doing, but she at least had a common sense of diplomacy.

She scanned her temporary quarters, memorizing every detail of the room. As she turned around, she could hear footsteps beside her, and she whirled around like a frightened cat to confront whoever dared to sneak up on her.

"Letter from the general, Captain. Instructions and information about the invasion." The recruit was small and young; no older than eighteen. He must have been a draftee, or else he would have seen a couple of birthdays on the front or died in the process.

She nodded to him curtly and took the paper, dismissing him with a small wave, but the soldier did not budge.

"Yes, Private?"

"There is a request to speak with you."

"From whom?"

"I-" He coughed. "I would like to speak with you."

"Very well then," she said without emotion. "What inquiries do you have?" If she were being truly honest with herself, she had little idea of what to do in such a position of command. She was used to taking over control, yet not to being handed control as if it were rightfully hers.

"Am I qualified to ask who your second-in-command is?"

"No." In truth, she didn't even know that herself, but she had been informed that he would arrive at the base camp the following day with orders and maps for the infiltration. They would be marching out two days after that. "Are there any other questions?"

He shook his head, and she brushed past him without another word. She had learned long ago that if she wanted men to respect her instead of ogling her she would have to make them fear her, because at the age of these soldiers nothing short of pure fear would force respect out of them for a woman barely older than themselves. So she left him with an icy glare and continued on her way, filing through the telegraphs he had delivered.

The first few were typical messages, detailing the old casualty reports and soldiers' records. The letter at the bottom of the stack, however, caught her attention. It was a telegram from the army post in western Ukraine, stating the arrival and information of her second-in-command.

"Well you have certainly made a name for yourself," she said to the documents, reading them over. The young man had ascended ranks nearly as fast as herself. He had been stationed in an area with mass casualties on his first deployment, so it was only natural that he had to take leadership eventually, but his superiors had certainly commended his brains.

Brains, she thought with a smirk, You don't see much of that around here. No one needed mental brilliance for the army. They only needed to be able to handle a rifle. All the schooling they'd ever had went out the window when they got into a trench and learned how to fire a machine gun. They didn't need such complex knowledge as maths and philosophy and psychology anymore. Trying to think deeper than the surface hurt their heads.

Spalko had sworn, when she had enlisted, not to lose her mind. She had seen soldiers go mad in the past. She knew what the war could do to people. But her mind was all she had. It was her everlasting tool. Most men kept themselves sane by suppressing logical thought. Spalko fed off of order and logic, allowing her thoughts to take control. If she tried to prevent herself from thinking any deeper about war, she would lose what sense of sanity she'd ever possessed. Which, she admitted to herself, had never been a lot.

Deep thought and conversation were not exercises many soldiers engaged in, especially during wartime. What scrambled most minds cleared hers up. It was no wonder she had easily isolated herself throughout her lifetime.

This lieutenant, she considered, looking over his papers one more time, He thinks in strategy. He thinks like me. Her mental gears were turning. If his skills matched her own, then they would be unstoppable. They could be the most skilled team of soldiers in the field.

It was a goal. A motivational force- something to focus on in the distance. And that was what she so needed at the moment.

So she brushed the wrinkles from her uniform, and stalked toward the bunkers, with the knowledge that success would depend on her soldiers, not just herself.

The bunkers were loud and disorganized, and she hated entering, but it had to be done. Any new captain had to establish their rules.

"Assemble!" she shouted into the makeshift houses. Nothing changed. "Soldiers, assemble!" she called again, but their raucous frivolity continued. Finally, Spalko kicked the door open.

"I said assemble," she hissed as eyes turned to her. But they did not move.

She approached their table, raising one dark eyebrow. "Poker?" she inquired skeptically, inspecting the cards on the table.

Private Arman appeared to be winning at the moment, and apparently he was also feeling quite audacious, because he shot her a cocky grin and said, "Strip poker, actually. Care to join?" He winked smugly.

Their former captain had been far too soft on them.

In a flash, Spalko had the young man pinned against the wall, her elbow inches from his face and his arm twisted behind his back.

"I could break your arm," she hissed softly, "if I so desired. But that would send you away to a military hospital, and I would be one man short. I might not be what you expected, Private. I may be a woman, but if you can't keep you're salacious comments to yourself then I will be the reason you piss your trousers in fear tonight."

It wasn't pretty, but it had to be done. Even as a woman in uniform, she had little to no respect from the daring young soldiers surrounding her. But respect, like rank and honor, could be earned. And she had every intention to do so, even if she had to smack a few men back into line. She only hoped her lieutenant would be a bit more cooperative.

She released the private, her icy blue eyes scanning the room. "Does anyone else have something they would like to say?" She spoke in a low, dangerous tone. They were all silent. Arman was trembling in his chair.

She turned away from them and left. "Rise early," she commanded, "Train early, and during midday you will be briefed as to this unit's assignment."

They watched her disappear from the bunker in silence.

**You should review. I will hypnotize you to review. Review. Review. Review. Review. Is it working? Review. Review. Review. Okay, I'll shut up now.**

**Also, thank you to my wonderful beta reader for sending this back to be before I went on vacation and brainstorming with me throughout the plotting process :)**


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello! This would be chapter two, in case you haven't guessed. At long last and after a good deal of writer's block, it is here.**

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She studied the map with every intent to begin their infiltration within the next couple of days. It would be necessary to radio General Stalin before beginning the mission, of course, but it had never hurt to plan ahead. Spalko traced a path from their outpost in Poland. They had been quite lucky, to even have taken this outpost. If it had been up to her, the infiltration unit wouldn't even have existed, and the army would have blasted their way to Berlin the same way the Germans had blasted their way to Leningrad. But she'd been given a break when they offered her a stealth job and the rank of Captain to do it. No more bunking with the soldier boys, the right to command respect; the job had appealed to her survival instinct.

A soft knock at the bunker doors caused her to look up from the plans. She was tempted to think it was one of her soldiers too intimidated to just walk in, but she knew better. It didn't matter whether they were scared of her or not; it was part of soldier etiquette to forget all the manners they learned before they were drafted. Not that she'd ever cared a great deal about manners, that is, until she had to beat someone's ass in her undergarments.

"Who goes there?"

"Your appointed second-in-command," came the response.

"You have permission to enter," she said stiffly, and the old door swung open.

If she was surprised by the young man, she did not show it. He seemed to have ascended the ranks from a draftee, only a couple years older than herself if she were to estimate. But his posture and demeanor were atypical for a soldier, especially one who had been drafted at age seventeen. Which, given the accolades he had received from other generals and the high rank he had achieved at at this age, was probably how old he had been when the drafts came.

He held out his hand, clutching a blue-gray crap in his other. "Damian Karov."

She shook his hand stiffly. "I know. You haven't spent much time on the front, have you Lieutenant Karov?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Most people who spend all their time being bombed and shot at wind up as damaged goods at some point. You seem relatively unbroken, compared to everyone else at this base."

He smirked. "For your information, I was at the front. I was lucky enough to receive a flesh wound that wasn't fatal and take a few months leave. Cleaned myself up before coming back, of course. What about you? You don't seem particularly damaged."

Spalko searched his words for any sort of coming on, but the man seemed genuine. She was unused to having no justified reason to despise a man her age and was not quite sure how to respond to his inquiries.

"I've taken a few shots myself. None particularly life threatening. Obviously we've both lived long enough out here to take command, so we probably can't say the same for our mental health. But that's a subject for another day."

She took a seat at the dimly lit desk and laid her maps across the table. "Come, we should discuss the infiltration."

Karov nodded and stood over her, tracing the units and their paths to Berlin with her finger. "I take it we'll be arriving in Germany before any other unit?"

"Indeed. We are, to put it bluntly, the guinea pigs. We gather intel on the German operations through stealth movement and report back to the General."

"I thought guinea pigs were supposed to be expendable."

"We're guinea pigs with machine guns. No one can be expendable when they have the latest in machine warfare technology standing behind them."

"So I see." He looked up from the paper, studying Spalko's face in the dim light. Her expression was inscrutable, her eyes narrow. Very little emotion was detectable through her complete concentration. Meeting his gaze, Spalko hardened her face.

"It is late," Karov began hesitantly, "I should be leaving. I apologize for my late arrival, but we were only permitted to travel after dark– a way of maintaining the security of the bunkers. We could bring no tanks in case we were discovered, though we carried an extra load of ammunition."

"It is of no concern, but I agree. You should be departing to your quarters." She stood abruptly and rolled up the maps, sliding them to one side of the table and lowering the light. "And I should be getting some sleep, before we have to brief the unit tomorrow."

"I will see you early, then," replied Karov, fitting his cap to his head and watching Spalko for an answer.

"You will. It was good to have met you, Lieutenant Karov."

"Good night, Captain." He strode out the door, not once looking back.

Spalko watched him go. Her eyebrows furrowed together in bemusement. He was certainly not the average soldier, and his demeanor had piqued her curiosity. There was a slight limp in his step, and she concluded that his leg had been shot in the past, and that was why he had taken leave. But obviously the wound had not impaired him in any way; otherwise he wouldn't be returning to the front after all this time.

But then, politics and desperation had driven many of the injured back to the front, against their will. The war was ending, but the deaths had taken their toll on the Russian government, and they certainly could not continue to drive back the Germans if all their soldiers were corpses on the battlefield.

Subconsciously, her hand drifted to her own battle scars, the bullet wounds on her collar bone and the burns from chemical weapons running up her left arm. These scars, like for any soldier, were the reason she couldn't go home and pretend the last few years hadn't happened. Not that Spalko was about to sink into denial. She was proud of her scars. They were proof she had survived- a woman leading a troop of men, still living and standing and breathing. Still fighting beyond the point where everyone thought she would have died.

She liked to think her scars would ward of potential suitors looking for influence with her father when she returned from war.

But then, she also liked to think she could ward them off without the scars.

Her thoughts were interrupted as the still-open door to her quarters let in the silhouette of a man.

"Captain?"

"Yes, Lieutenant Karov?"

The silhouette awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. "It appears that we are sharing quarters."

"Excuse me?"

"No one informed me of this either."

"Probably because nothing ever happens around here. The men probably want to elicit a reaction." She shrugged her shoulders. "I gave up on prudishness when I joined the army, but a captain generally receives their own sleeping quarters."

"Short on rooms?"

"This is war, Karov. We create protocols for it and then abandon them as the situations arise. War is the definition of winging it and taking things as they come. Which is, apparently, what we are to do here. Fortunately, there is a second bunk, seeing as this room was originally meant for two or more to room in."

Karov lay his cap down on the desk and ran a hand through his hair, obviously unsure of what to do next.

"Oh, for God's sake, Lieutenant, just choose a damn bunk, strip your uniform and go to sleep. I'm not going to bite your head off, unless you pull something on me."

Spalko had a rather imperial demeanor, and having been recently dragged back into army etiquette, after a few months on leave where people were polite andaccommodating, Karov was probably suffering severe culture shock.

Spalko held up a finger. "If you do try something, Lieutenant, be aware that I sleep with my pistol, and I'm not beyond somnambulism," she threatened quietly, dimming the oil lamp until the bunker was completely dark. She could still see the gleam of her sword and allowed that to guide her to her own bunk.

She hadn't been quite serious about the somnambulism, she thought as she settled into the rough bed. But she was certainly an insomniac, and with the briefing tomorrow, the gears in her mind would never stop turning.

It was bound to be a long night.

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**Now then as I have established in my other fics, you should review to protest bags of air in the Lays industry. **


	3. Chapter 3

**Okay then! The third chapter, after a great deal of time. Shout out to my awesome beta reader LadyLini for her editing work and corrections and all such things :) and thanks to everyone who has reviewed. **

The unit marched westward under cover of darkness, bringing only the provisions they needed to reach the next encampment. Spalko and Karov brought up the rear, making sure they could not be tailed. She had confidence that, in spite of their clear lack of common sense, her soldiers were smart enough to see a frontal ambush before the firing started.

"Where were you stationed before this?" Karov inquired, adjusting a pack and rifle over his shoulder.

"A rather quiet outpost outside Moscow."

"The Petrov base?"

It clicked in her mind. "Yes, that's the one."

"There was a great deal of fighting there early on."

Spalko sighed. "I suppose so, but how are we even to tell when the war started? The whole thing is rather foggy, if you ask me. I simply consider the war to have begun when I made it my business to be involved in."

"That's a self-important stance on things."

"Well, it makes it easier to be angry when you're staring out over a field of old corpses frozen over by early snow."

"Was the Petrov base really that grim?" Karov's eyebrows shot up in surprise. He had seen the base once before it was attacked, but it had only been a resting station in a westward march of troops into Southeastern Ukraine. It had been his very first assignment in the military. (There was an extra quotation mark here.)

Spalko sighed, her eyes seeming to shadow as she remembered her recent experience at the destroyed bunkers, its lingering sense of horror engrained in her mind. "Indeed, it was. There is no time for mass burials when you're under fire. There is no time to mourn, nor identify your dead. The few survivors, as I'm told, were forced to flee. We were the next group to enter, the outpost having been abandoned for four years. If you step on a skull, you're supposed to shake it from your boots and walk on." Her eyes hardened. "It is easy to become lost in the grief. So instead you focus on your anger. I began to think that if I had been there, then perhaps I could have strategized better and saved the base. My whole judgement of time began to revolve around when I entered the war.

"I think the Germans cheated, invading us before the war had even officially started and even though I know that's not completely true, the thought angers me. It drives me to keep fighting."

Karov clapped her shoulder affectionately. "There's no honor in war anymore."

"I know," she sighed, deliberately shoving away his hand, "It is an unfortunate side effect of the development of machine warfare. But that's okay, because there is no honor in vengeance either, and I'm Hell bent on exacting my revenge upon the troops who destroyed the Petrov base and slaughtered everyone in it. So I suppose it's good that modern warfare has no honor, because now I don't have to worry about upholding my own honor in the face of mass destruction."

Spalko chuckled bitterly, catching the eye of her second-in-command.

"You know," he said, "you have a pretty cynical outlook on life."

"The price of wisdom."

He snorted. "Pessimism is wisdom now. How marvelous. I suppose then, that I have none of it."

"Very little, but I'm sure you'll grow wiser as the battles go on. After all, there are only so many dead bodies you can look upon without growing a little more world-weary."

She was joking, the bitterness of army humor shining through her grimace- the closest she had yet come to a smile in anyone's presence, her lips a tight line of harbored knowledge sealed away from prying eyes. Every soldier cracked jokes about their deceased; it was only army etiquette, as Spalko had taken to calling it. But her sarcasm was not necessarily humor. It was, after all, the truth. It just had a way of tumbling from her lips, so that it could be taken as a sardonic sense of humor and not an expression of dislike towards humans themselves.

She didn't much care for humans anyway. Individually, it was harder. The lines between indifference and comradeship were blurred. But as a species, she could very easily dislike humanity, after the horrors she had seen them inflict upon each other.

She watched Karov's expression shift as he tried to decipher the tone behind her words. She relished in his confusion. If she alienated herself, she could suppress any sense of personal fondness toward her lieutenant, and thus not be wracked with grief when he died. It was a methodical approach to survival at war that she had developed the minute she set foot in the Petrov base and felt her brain sacrifice control to her emotions. And if there was one thing Spalko hated, it was not being in control of herself.

Tired of watching him squirm internally, she resumed the conversation. "And where were you stationed before your leave of absence?"

It was a trick question. She knew exactly where he had been stationed from the file sent to her before he arrived. But she wanted to hear him talk about his former comrades. If she were being honest, she simply wanted to hear him talk in general. Because if she were being honest, as much as she disliked people, she was equally fascinated by them. The way their minds worked, those gears turning and turning, often just to come to the wrong conclusion and make assumptions based on circumstantial evidence. She loved to analyze and organize their behaviors, to study them like science experiments until she could predict their next moves and quite nearly read what they were thinking.

She could tell everyone all about themselves if she so desired, but no good captain ever revealed his or her best weapon before the battle had begun.

"I was stationed in western Ukraine to prevent the Germans from finding another invasion path."

"They didn't get the chance, did they?"

"A small scout unit lost their asses trying, but it was nothing to be frightened of. Hitler was already losing his resources and at that point."

Spalko wrinkled her nose. "They would have lost a lot more than that if I had been there."

"You're from Ukraine?"

"Farther east. But yes, I am, though I rather consider myself to be from the Soviet Union. I take it your guard unit didn't see much fighting?"

"Why do you say that?"

"If you saw the front you would be as cynical as me," she said dryly, fingering the pistol in its holster at her hip. It was a habit she had developed after almost being shot in an ambush a couple of years prior. It was reassuring to feel the presence of a lethal weapon on her person, and Spalko was always weary of attack.

"I would be, though I would probably still be a little more friendly."

"Probably so." Her tone of finality suggested she was done talking, so he fixed his eyes ahead, his gaze hardening into the cold trees.

It was the movement that caught his eye, soon after the panicked shouts of 'ambush!' and the sudden disarray that struck the band.

Spalko whipped out her pistol and fired off as many shots as she could manage into the tree line, before lowering her pack and ducking behind the truck.

"Remind me," she hissed, "who's idea was it to bring a whole truck of provisions with us to the next outpost?"

"Someone of higher rank than you," whispered Karov harshly beside her.

"The engine bellows so loudly they can probably hear it for miles around."

"Or we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Duck!"

Spalko ducked her head, dropping to her knees in time to see Karov take out a German soldier behind her.

"Thanks," she growled, spinning around and firing off a couple more shots. Her aim was remarkable when she had a clear view of what she was shooting, but it was best to be safe when it came to covering your back.

"You're welcome," said Karov, craning his neck to see behind him. "That's what a lieutenant is for."

"Actually, I think a lieutenant exists to take over when the acting commander dies." Spalko peered around the side of the truck, taking it to be clear, and gestured for Karov to follow her. They stepped silently around to the front, where most of the shooting was taking place. She counted two of her soldiers down- which was considerably lucky for a caravan taken by surprise- and thirty still standing. They had been a small unit, as their goal was infiltration and not open troop warfare.

She had removed the larger rifle from where it hung on her pack and cocked it quickly, firing into the fray. She could pick out the enemy soldiers quite well, her eyes flicking about and catching the slight differences in uniform color or the shape of their caps. She would have time for remorse later, when the implications of humans killing each other without honor came back to bite her.

And even then, it wasn't so much remorse for what she had done as mourning over what had become of humanity, herself included. She never mourned the men she killed- her connections to them were impersonal and as long as she never took time to watch their faces still, she could remain emotionally detached.

"Captain?" The firing had nearly come to a cease; the ambush had been small, simply a band of men to attack anyone who passed on the road. She turned to see Karov, sporting a nasty graze on his arm, but no major injuries.

"You are wounded."

He grimaced at the blood soaking into his uniform. "So I am. But not incapacitated."

"Nor am I. We should gather our own. Take names and ranks."

He nodded stiffly. "Indeed."

Spalko spun on her heel and left to take the roll of her dead and her survivors, speaking to each individually to make sure he understood the universal message: assemble for our own safety.

The group assembled quickly, their rowdy behavior of the previous days sobered by the sudden witness to loss of life. Before, the notion of death had been just that: a notion. Now, it was a living possibility, breathing down their necks. They had seen the effects of a couple flying bullets, and it was just beginning to sink into their minds.

Karov stood beside his captain, hands clasped behind his back, watching Spalko for further orders.

"Dismissed. Keep moving," she commanded. "Stay in formation." And the caravan continued how it was supposed to, without another word.

"I'm taking advantage of their fear while I can," she explained. "Discussing what just happened will disrupt the order. They will have time to grieve when we reach our next camp."

Karov dipped his head. He had no right to question her decisions as captain, even if they seemed devoid of pity or emotion.

But he couldn't resist a friendly jest. "Not going to let them think you're soft, are you Captain?"

She continued looking straight ahead as she replied, "I have to keep up appearances."

"Truly, Captain, your wit rivals your beauty."

There was silence, but through the darkness he swore he could see her smile.

**Well then... gosh Spalko is so much fun to write. The awful (and kind of wonderful) thing is that I get to project my own sarcasm onto this character with little repercussion. So anything generally pessimistic that I wouldn't say out loud gets thrown into a bit of dialogue in this fic. **

**Well, not everything. But... some things.  
**


	4. Chapter 4

**Well then. It's been a while, to say the least. I've been enjoying writing easy parodies and silliness and have left this untouched for a few weeks. But some spare time presented itself and suddenly ideas were sparking in my head. **

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"I can't believe you took a bullet for me."

Karov grimaced as the army doctor bound the gunshot wound on his arm. "It really only grazed me," he corrected, examining the damage done.

Spalko tightened her grip on his forearm as the doctor sealed the bandages. "You're damn lucky it did, too. You very well could have died, and then I would be one man short."

"That's really all you worry about, isn't it?" said Karov; his tone was jocular, but it came through clenched teeth, "One man short."

To this Spalko did not respond. She hadn't visited Karov in the infirmary for a friendly chat. If she were truly honest with herself, she'd been worried about him, and simply the notion of sentimentality in a war environment, especially toward her lieutenant, was enough to make her uneasy. Emotion did not mix well with an easily compromised mission and an already massive casualty rate for their country.

But then her mind would play back the short battle, and the bullet flying toward them would reappear, slowing down so that she could see its rotation in the air and her own ignorance of its path before Karov shoved her aside, the bullet slicing through the seams of his tunic sleeve and grazing his arm. She would watch herself turn around, eyes wild with the light of battle, cogs snapping into place in her head as she subconsciously prepared to take lives without a second thought.

It was at times like this that she did not know whether she possessed a gift or a curse in her impeccable memory.

She was proud; it was a trait she disliked about herself for its disadvantage in hostile situations, and especially in a tight negotiation. But she was no fool. She had been held hostage before, and not holding back her witty remarks had nearly gotten her tongue chopped off. Her skills had gotten her off the hook that day, but she knew a day would come when her particular skill set wouldn't be able to help her.

And that day, it would be her allies who saved her ass.

She looked Lieutenant Karov up and down, bullet wound, dusty face and all. She had known him for little more than a week or two, but he already felt like a real second-in-command would. She trusted him to have her back, at least. And that was something she couldn't say for every other second she'd had in the military and the majority of her superior officers. After all, she wouldn't exactly call herself a trusting person.

In truth, she could feel the anxiety for Karov's safety coiling in her belly, and she disliked that worry, only having known the man for three weeks, two of which they had spent traveling to their outpost in Poland.

They had only arrived the other day, and for fear of infection, Karov had seen the medic. They would be in the best shape possible before the stealth mission began. Or at least, as stealthy as they could be with guns and dynamite.

"You're free to go," said the doctor, looking up from the bandages he had wrapped around Karov's upper arm with an expression of satisfaction, "You'll heal fine, but make sure to change those bandages at night." He gestured to the wrapped wound, then left to check on other patients, smoothing out the small cot for the next injury as he went.

"Thank you, Doctor," Karov dipped his head in appreciation as Spalko stalked toward the door, eager to leave the infirmary. Her mind was overwhelmed with sights, focusing on every small detail in the room and analyzing it thoroughly.

"I'm afraid the man who lost his foot will not make it," she stated, her voice frank and devoid of pity, "But the private with the bullet wound in his shoulder will survive."

"How do you know?" asked Karov, buttoning his uniform over the bandages.

"I observe, Lieutenant." She never quite looked him in the face, her sharp blue eyes always focusing straight ahead as she strode back toward the main encampment.

Silently, Karov studied her face in the evening light. Her features were sharp and intimidating, her hair well groomed and knotted tightly in the back of her head. By all appearances, she was the hard commander that her soldiers needed to keep them in line and the dangerous officer with a mind like a falcon and heart like an ice box.

So he did what she told him to. He observed, searching beneath the masks and layers she kept up to demand respect. He saw how her features softened with relief when the doctor informed him that he would be perfectly fine and needed no further treatment. He saw the corners of her lips lift slightly in the dark whenever she said something particularly witty and he followed it up with a quip of his own.

And he was quite sure she noticed when he called her beautiful; true, he had been offering up a clever remark, but within it he had concealed a statement he thought was true. Even if it was roundabout, he always tried to speak his mind. Spalko valued his convictions, after all, but he wasn't sure she would be willing to hear a personal comment. He wasn't even sure he would be willing to accept such thoughts within himself anyway.

They stopped in the general's tent to turn in the official report regarding the ambush they had walked into during their journey. He nodded to them, nothing out of the ordinary, despite the fact that Spalko had deliberately put off giving him the report until after she had assured herself that Lieutenant Karov would heal quickly. The general, she thought with a grimace, was too busy with his whiskey and cigarettes to mull over reports as the hours passed him by.

She knew if it had been her captain turning in a late report, she would have reprimanded them, no matter the circumstances. But that was a matter she chose not to dwell on, because she was not in such a position, and in war it was no use pondering over what could possibly have happened, were the circumstances different. What mattered were the facts.

But that didn't stop her from receding into her bunker for the evening with a cigarillo of her own and enough candlelight to analyze her relationship with Karov before her heart got the best of her head. She might have managed to overanalyze until her emotions faded away and her mind regained its dominance, had Karov himself not entered the bunker and interrupted her train of thought.

She opened her eyes, watching him close the door as quietly as he could between the tips of her black boots propped up on the table. Her eyes followed him as he hung his overcoat on a bunk and sat down beside it, tapping his thumbs together on his lap.

She doubted he had noticed her presence until she made it known.

"Putting the soldiers to bed, Lieutenant?" she asked dryly through her cigarillo smoke, arching one eyebrow and finding some dark form of satisfaction in the way he jumped up in surprise at the sound of her voice. Her lips twisted into a wry smirk as he sucked in a breath to calm himself, but she remained motionless in the corner, cigarette now tucked between her fingers, and the smell of smoke and molten wax settling in the air.

"We are once again to share a bunker, Captain," he replied, still recovering his wits.

She smoothed her features to show no surprise. "Is this to become a normal thing now, or are they simply running out of space?"

"Most likely the latter, Captain."

Without a word, Spalko got up from her chair and made to crank the small generator that would provide some light for their bunker. As opposed to their first outpost, this one had electricity, if not a great deal of it.

"If I may ask, why were you in candlelight if you could have electricity?"

Spalko stopped turning the crank as lights flickered on above them. "It was dimmer, and I prefer to have a certain degree of darkness if I'm trying to think."

She watched as the Lieutenant shed his shirt, examining the bandages. "I should probably change these, shouldn't I?"

"Did he tell you to?"

"Yes."

"Then you should." In most cases she would allow a bit of extra time to pass before changing bandages, but she didn't want Karov to worsen or his wound to get infected.

He looked down at the bandage ruefully. "Damn," he said with a light chuckle. She could see the slight flicker of fear pass over his face, as if it had just barely hit him that he could very well have died. That fact, of course, had crossed Spalko's mind hours before, but she understood that it took time for such possibilities to sink in.

"That is correct, Lieutenant," was all she said as she studied his expression carefully. He, in turn, scrutinized the dressing of the bullet wound, then reached with one arm to pull it off. He wasn't getting very far; he only had one hand to put to use.

Rolling her eyes at his incapability, Spalko strode over to her second-in-command and sat down beside him. "Allow me, Lieutenant Karov."

With the precision of a surgeon, Spalko unwound the gauze and tossed it onto the bunker floor. Karov winced slightly, muscles contracting, and she shot him a glare before laying eyes on the flesh wound. The bullet hadn't gone straight into his arm, and a wave of relief washed over her that she suppressed, fully aware that he had assured her earlier that it had only grazed him.

However, it had certainly left its mark, and a nasty one at that. It had torn a deep cut in his skin, red and rough with drying blood.

"Another scar for the collection, eh?" Karov piped up, his voice slightly hoarse with exhaustion. They had only arrived about noon that day, and the constant traveling had taken its toll on the entire unit.

"I'm sure my scar collection is far more impressive, but I'll allow you to indulge in your pride while I bind this for you," muttered Spalko, "Gauze please."

"In the pocket of my overcoat."

She narrowed her eyes at him once more before fetching the bandages from his uniform coat. Walking back to his bed, she spotted the radio in the corner and turned it on. On most occasions, she loathed the radio. It disrupted her thinking with nonsense and static. She didn't know what possessed her to turn it on now, but the slow swing now resonating in the bunker was soothing to her nerves. Her teeth stopped gnawing the cigarette. She hadn't realized she'd been biting it so hard in the first place. She hated when she couldn't agree with herself; it felt awkward and off balance, like she walked with a cane and spoke with a whistle.

Still without a word, she rebound his arm, pinning the dressings so they wouldn't come undone and blowing cigarillo dust into his face as if disregarding what would be considered manners in normal society would ease her mind through the war.

"There," she finished, her voice husky through the thick smoke, "That should be better."

He craned his neck to see the binding, and nodded. "Thank you."

Her head had just barely reared to regain control when her emotions decided they would act before they were overcome.

Irina Spalko was anything but impulsive. She never acted without weighing every variable and considering every effect her decision could have. She was unsure still what piece of her mind thought to do exactly what it did, but it saw an opportunity and took it before her logical side could regain control.

And she doubted she would have done it, had Karov not been leaning toward her in an attempt to be subtle. And she wouldn't have done it, had he not been so damn clean, by army standards. Certainly, showers were a rare privilege, and one got used to being dusty, but with fresh bandages, his kind face, rough with stubble and a few nicks, he was far more tidy than their compatriots.

And after she had acted- now that they were, in fact, passionately kissing like they were going to die tomorrow, (and as far as either of them were concerned, that was a likely possibility) she was weighing such variables.

And after the variables come the inevitable outcomes. A superior officer could separate them for an inappropriate relationship. She, Karov or both of them could die. Or, they left the military and lived a civilian life. But that was out of the question entirely. No option sounded pleasurable, despite whatever short term arrangement they may conjure up.

So, she parted from her lieutenant, lips swollen and eyes alight with some form of adrenaline, and allowed her logical mind to take over once more.

"This will not be spoken of," she decided aloud after a moment's thought, her cigar back between her teeth. Karov had reclaimed his dusty shirt. "Are we clear, Lieutenant Karov?"

His voice was as hard as hers; he had obviously foreseen the same obstacles to their affections for one another. If someone had entered the room right then, they could not have guessed as to what had happened seconds previous.

"Clear as day, Captain Spalko."

* * *

**I did get a bit indulgent at the end. Reviews brighten my day! Make potato chips, not air :)**


	5. Chapter 5

**Hello there, I'm back, after a long break during which time my life has gotten infinitely more stressful. However I still intend to keep this fic up, and bear with me because this chapter is a more thought and less action. But I promise that next chapter we'll get a whole lot of action, so this is the calm before the storm, so to speak. A lot of build up. **

**Anyways, thank you so much to all the people who are still reading :) and to my lovely beta reader for sticking with me, even when I send her messy rough drafts that I finish right before I go to bed.**

Irina Spalko liked to think, and to force others into doing the same. She liked to watch them flounder for an answer, as if their ignorance was built for her entertainment. So why, she wondered, was she so drawn to her lieutenant?

Perhaps it was because Karov provided something different; a brand of variety that stood out to her amidst the grim monotony of military life. He put thought into her rhetorical, existential questions, considering them as if she had not just been speaking aloud to prevent her tidy mind from becoming clouded with information. He responded to her cynical commentaries with quips of his own, rivaling her in wit.

She had mulled over that very question for at least six nights, staring at the bunker ceiling and counting every groove in the wood as she listened to Karov breath in the neighboring bunk. Undoubtedly, the arrangements of the military had something to do with it. Spalko was no fool; she could see the change in her soldiers' behavior whenever they marched through a town and laid eyes on some innocent young woman waving from a crowd. Their eyes would widen and they would shout innuendos, desperately hoping for their gestures to be reciprocated.

She herself had never suffered from such menial afflictions of the heart, but she had spent enough time casually observing those around her to come to the conclusion that humans could not survive without some degree of physical affection. The ordered absence of that affection by superiors, and by the general lack of females in the military led to increased desires. It was the reason she had to set her soldiers straight whenever she walked into a room to address them as a group.

Strip poker, she remembered, scoffing at their juvenile conduct as she assembled her gun, preparing to lead her unit's first official mission of stealth. She could feel the cold metal against her side as she slipped it into its holster, knowing it would always be at her side in times of need. Her gun was the only constant in her life - she could always rely on it to have her back if the situation got messy, and it never misfired.

Which, she thought grimly, brought her back to the question of Lieutenant Karov. It seemed to her a simple task, to pretend that they had not been desperately grasping at each others' faces three days previous, quenching for a short time their starvation for physical intimacy that the isolation of war had bred within every soldier.

She stepped out of her bunker, her eyes scanning the clearing where their soldiers had made camp, searching for Karov. He had left early to retrieve maps of the area, forthe purpose of scouting out places where the Germans could prepare an ambush.

"Captain, we're loading the trucks!" The voice belonged to Private Arman, whom she recognized from her first day as a unit commander. She almost felt pleased that he'd survived so long. She dipped her head in acknowledgement, watching him climb into one of the trucks in the caravan. There was always something about being able to place a voice to a person and a moment in time that brought on sentimentality. It was one of the little things that forced her to retain some form of emotion, despite her best attempts at becoming resigned to death and destruction.

She supposed that Lieutenant Karov was another of those things; not just a familiar name and face but a constant prick in her side. She was not quite sure that she could be as unaffected by his death as she would like, were such an event to occur. It unnerved her, even frightened her to the point of discombobulation. It was a subtle but deep-rooted fear of her own attraction which she had never before experienced.

Spalko stalked over to the green car that headed their caravan, preparing to enter a town in Austria. She had made no effort to learn its name, because the war had all but destroyed it. No use fueling her emotions, building a personal connection to the place through its identity. They were making a risky move, but the invading troops had managed to secure a small camp inside the town yet undiscovered by German soldiers. From there Spalko's unit was to begin their infiltration.

As she climbed into the passenger seat of the jeep, she deliberately avoided making eye contact with the driver. She had grown more weary of sentiment ever since it had seized control over her actions and led to a heated, pent-up kiss between herself and her appointed second-in-command. Looking someone in the eye was an easy way to become attached to them, even impersonally. Ever since the Petrov base, she had sworn away that form of attachment.

Behind her, Karov climbed over the door and perched in the backseat, holding his rifle aloft. "You never know what we might run into," he said, his tone bearing some slight form of humor. Yet his voice was stiff, as it always was when he addressed Spalko. He too was aware of the electric current pulsing between them; the result of years without physical intimacy - a physiological need in order to survive, especially the harsh conditions they had been living under during the war.

As the engines started up and the caravan snaked it way out of their base camp, Spalko allowed her eyes to drift for one moment to Karov, sitting upright and watching the road ahead for even the slightest signs of ambush. There was no doubt he was focused, but she also did not doubt he could see her, studying his every move with sharp eyes and a mind for detail.

Romantic trysts were not unheard of in the army, yet the rarity of female officers prevented them from becoming a common occurrence. She could recall one instance - somewhat of a legend for officers in training, laying down the consequences of such an inappropriate relationship. A young soldier, no older than nineteen, eloped with a nurse in his unit shortly before the Germans invaded Leningrad. They both died in the invasion; their legacy only one of great irony, for she died by a bullet and he of illness and infection.

True, it was only a legend to frighten soldiers from impregnating, and thus incapacitating, nurses in a time of great need for anyone practiced in medicine. Yet their tale was a cautionary one, and their lack of identity allowed every soldier to imagine himself in the place of the boy who died in Leningrad.

She almost cringed while recalling the story, before schooling her features into their customary scowl. She had a strict reputation to uphold amongst her soldiers, and a dangerous mission to accomplish, neither of which fear or friendliness would help her to complete.

Her fingers fumbling as the jeep bounced along a rough patch in the road, Spalko lit a cigarillo and mourned the lack of darkness and silence that prevented her from truly taking her feelings into consideration. She could mull all she wanted over such matters, but here it would accomplish nothing. Better to wallow in a personal cloud of smoke than force herself to think further when she knew she would come upon neither solutions nor revelations.

"Captain?" Karov addressed her in the same flat tone, devoid of the passion he had always spoken with in the past.

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

The vehicle bumped over a pot hole, and Karov steadied himself before continuing. "What is the name of our destination?"

Of course he asked such a question, because he knew Spalko could not tell him the answer. He understood her philosophies about war. He was only trying to vex her further, and disliked the sudden pressure and heat in her face that came along with her irritation.

"Do you enjoy the feeling of grief, Lieutenant?" she shot back, mirroring his monotone. "Do you like looking at rubble and ruins and feeling some tight connection to the place, because you know its name and what it was before it became rubble? Because the town we're going to has a lot of rubble. Whole buildings that are nothing but piles of stone. Now we have one simple task: navigate the ruins and the surviving structures to find evidence of enemy soldiers before we advance. Would you rather go through arbitrary piles of rock and cement or places that once stood with names, and meanings, and purposes now reduced to those arbitrary piles? Because the latter sounds a hell of a lot more painful to me."

To this, Karov did not respond, for he had no answer to such an outburst.

Her voice had taken on the harshness of an experienced general, who had seen so much death he wondered how she still kept on doing what she did. She realized then that the world-weary gleam in his eyes and the catch in this throat didn't come from how many people he'd seen dead and injured but which people he saw dead and injured.

It was for this reason, and these broken men, that Captain Irina Spalko had no inclination to develop feelings of any nature toward other officers. The lack of control she possessed over everything that had transpired after Karov had been shot had frightened her. She basked in the efficiency of her own mind, even relied on it, and to retain that mind in such an extreme environment, she needed to stay detached.

The road seemed to blur by, time compressing as her thoughts unwound at an incomprehensible rate.

Some time later, she felt Karov's hand on her shoulder, tapping her sharply to drag her mind back to the present. "Captain?"

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

"We have arrived."

She lifted her chin, swinging over the passenger side door and taking her first steps in the ruins of a settlement, her gaze sweeping over what was left of the town. "So we have."

**Well then, hope you enjoyed. The next chapter will be up who knows when, but it WILL be up. I promise. Pinky swear. And it'll be more interesting.**


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